


King of the Rodeo

by thermodynamic (euphoriaspill)



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Antisemitism, Brother-Sister Relationships, Child Neglect, Dog Fighting, Father-Son Relationship, Found Family, Gen, Heroin, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Judaism, Mother-Son Relationship, Murder, Period-Typical Sexism, Prostitution, Religious Conflict, Rodeo Competitions, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:15:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28708785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphoriaspill/pseuds/thermodynamic
Summary: Sometimes a family can be a washed-up cowboy, a former child prostitute with big dreams, and a thirteen-year-old JD who’s hungry for trouble. If you interpret that term real loosely.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	King of the Rodeo

**Author's Note:**

> ... I was curious about how mid-twenties Buck and seventeen-year-old Dallas became besties, which inspired... all of this. Warning for references to child abuse/neglect and underage sex work, and antisemitism (tropes, cultural loss, trying to convert someone Jewish to Christianity) throughout.

_July 1961_

Dallas's Aunt Lena handled him playing hooky from homeschool, asking wildly inappropriate questions at church, and tossing a copy of Watchtower magazine into the fireplace with Biblical forbearance and charity— she claimed as she tried to whip the living daylights out of him with a hickory switch, which was also meant to send out the devil. When she caught him sneaking his cousin Jimmy back inside the house at two in the morning, though, dizzy with grass and his ears full of worldly records, that was it. "You're done here," she insisted with the gravity of God chasing Adam and Eve out of— oh, fuck it, he's getting real tired of these goopy religious references. He lasted three months at her place, and he's a little disappointed in himself that he didn't manage to get tossed sooner. This lousy state's already making him go soft.

Norm looks like shit, which is typical. Less typical is the pitbull rubbing up against his leg, black-gummed and mean, its left ear a ragged stub; he never even liked watching his own son since his mama died, preferred passing the job on to the eighteen and nineteen-year-old girls he shot up on his lap with his hand up their skirts, in exchange for cooking Dallas spaghetti on the stove and buying him new clothes that fit. Too bad for them that Dallas wasn't the kind of kid looking for a new mommy. "I did my best with him," Aunt Lena says without any preamble, "I've done more than I owe my sister, at this point. I'm not going to let him send my children straight to hell."

Maybe Norm used to be smart, but twenty years, give or take, of alcoholism, drug abuse, and blows to the head have made his brain as porous as a sponge at this point. It takes him a few seconds to figure out what she's driving at. "Lady, you think _I_ want to look after his little ass?" Norm thumps his bare chest for emphasis. Dallas peers behind him, into his new digs; he hasn't bothered to unpack half their boxes yet. "This ain't a Woolworth's, he don't come with no return policy. Hit him harder or somethin'."

"He's cursed," she says flatly, giving Dallas a little push past the threshold— his carpetbag thumps against the spongy wooden floor. "The devil's child—"

"You don't fucking say, I could've told you as much myself—"

"If I shaved his head, I swear I'd find horns growing on his scalp—"

Norm scratches the back of his own, like he's thinking hard. "He still a Jew, if Anya converted? Passes through the blood anyway, don't it?"

The way he says _Jew_ makes it sound like he wants to say something else. Anya is his mom, whose picture still hangs in his aunt's house— eyes such a pale blue they're almost colorless, her gaze ever-so-slightly blank, like she can't figure out how to focus on the camera lens. "You got those brains from your daddy," Aunt Lena said one day, after he tried to trip her up, once again, with some theological questions she had no answers to. "When your mama was your age, she skipped school because she saw a flyer for a 'burlesque audition', and ended up at a flophouse. That's the kind of girl your mama was. A dummy." All Dallas remembers about her is the way those eyes looked when he found her dead on the floor, an empty vault.

Aunt Lena's lips thin into a line of barbed wire, her entire face an impenetrable steel trap. From the top of her perfectly hair-sprayed beehive to her sensible, almond-shaped toe shoes, she reminds Dallas of his grade school teachers who told him he'd die in prison, which precluded the possibility of him ever liking her. "I don't know or care _what_ he is, but it's not a Christian." She raises her hand like Moses parting the Red Sea, a last warning. "If you won't take him back, I'll drop him off at the fire station."

Norm rolls his eyes and gets Dallas by the— as little as he likes to admit it, skinny— forearm, drags him into the living room. When Dallas lifts up his foot, he sees what's dug into the sole of his shoe is dog shit, which also explains why the place smells like an open sewer. Then he slams the door in her face.

Dallas braces himself for the inevitable blow once the witness is gone, almost puts his hands up— Norm used to be a boxer to pay his way around the country, though he doesn't like to mention that he was a flyweight. He's not going to miss getting dragged door to door to tell people the good news about Jehovah, or the time he got kicked in the groin by a cow when he tried to milk her, but eating three reliable meals a day was pretty nice, and no matter how bullshit it was, they didn't hit you without a reason. "You miss me?" he asks instead, more cocksure and sneering than he really feels. The pitbull digs his teeth into the leg of his jeans, gives it an experimental tug that almost knocks him off his feet; he should probably count himself lucky if Norm laid out a mattress for him, and one he doesn't have to share.

"You little sonuvabitch," he says, and grins wide enough to show his gold fillings, the knocked-out teeth that left bloody caverns in his mouth. "Didn't think it'd take you this long to show up back here."

* * *

The honeymoon lasts about a week before they get into their usual fistfight, and Dallas gets kicked out again— literally, _kicked out_ , ends up sprawled on the pavement with a scraped chin and elbow. It's not much of a surprise and Dallas doesn't let it bother him, just hobbles to his feet and starts walking. Norm's never been a father to him, not really, more like a roommate who hates him or an older brother whose favorite part of the job is beating him up, and everything he's ever had in the world, he's used to scratching and clawing for. Back in Bed-Stuy, he'd been running around with an outfit ever since he was out of elementary school, fencing car parts, sputtering on cigarettes, learning how to fight with a knife and a piece of busted pipe and a gun. He doesn't expect his new life to be much different.

Dallas has never had to try to find trouble, it finds him. He might have to expend a little more effort here, though, he realizes as he hitches a ride from the beaten-down houses on Tulsa's East side to 'Buck's place', wherever that might be— he hasn't spent much time in the city since their U-Haul pulled up, Lena and her family lived out near Windrixville, in the country. This place is flat, dusty as all hell too, quiet in a way that unsettles him; Jesus Christ, he knew Okies probably weren't going to be the life of the party, but this is just pushing it. He shotguns some of this guy's 'drivin' whiskey' and has to quit staring out the window, feeling sorry for himself, when they pull up in the gravel driveway.

It's not exactly packed, in the middle of the day; Dallas tries to survey the place, keep his wits about him. There's a makeshift bar set up at the end of the room, a couple of guys sitting at it in— God help him— cowboy hats and knocking back shots, poker cards splayed out in front of them that seem to be there more for decoration than anything. The music is terrible, some country song no one would be caught dead putting on in New York. Dallas isn't sure if he should crawl back home to Norm and return later tonight, or see if he can manage to hitch a ride to his real home before it get dark out.

"You lost, kid?"

Dallas bristles on instinct. He won't turn fourteen for another few months, and he's not big for his age, but he's used to being mistaken for older all the same; it's in the way he carries himself, or maybe just the permanent scowl etched across his face. One of the cowboy hats— red, with blue and white stars speckled on it— swivels around in his barstool to look at him. He's got a shock of sandy hair coming out of it, and when he opens his mouth again, Dallas can see the black crater where his two front teeth are missing. "You lost?" he asks again, with a little more irritation, when Dallas doesn't answer. "Tulsa's JD set usually cruises down the Ribbon, it's further north. Unless you're lookin' to ride some ponies?"

The only ponies anyone's ridden in Dallas's presence weren't the kind he thinks Cowboy Hat is referring to; he barely manages to refrain from a full-body cringe, like he just stepped into a freezer, at the thought of being face-to-face with another barn animal. "No," he says. "Looking for a drink, mostly."

Cowboy Hat raises a sparse eyebrow. He's maybe twenty-two, twenty-three, that weird age where guys are out of their teenage gangliness but still don't shave regularly enough to be called men. "You got an ID?"

Dallas could rob the nearest gas station instead of continuing to put up with this. "I got money, that not enough for you?"

The other guy stands up like he's about to knock his lights out, and Dallas slides into a familiar fighting stance, but Cowboy Hat holds his hand up and he settles back into his seat. "You ain't from around here," he says in a slow, honeyed drawl. "Where'd you come from, huh? Talkin' like you're spittin' bullets out of a machine gun."

How… poetic, Dallas wouldn't have expected it from him. "New York," he says, and it comes out like _New Yawk_ , the 'a' sound stretching out endlessly across the room. "Bed-Stuy."

"Only sties we got 'round here are the kind you keep pigs in," the other guy says, then devolves into a fit of giggles like he's said something real clever. "You ever mucked one of those before?"

He, unfortunately, has. "Huh," Cowboy Hat says again, then downs all the rest of his whiskey in one gulp. "Come upstairs with me. Wanna show you somethin', New York."

Dallas never takes orders from anybody if he can help it— someone telling him to budge over on line is enough to make him want to kick like an ornery mule. That being said, his hunger for trouble can usually be relied upon to override his stubbornness; he follows him up the rickety wooden stairs, one of which is rotted clean through, into a bathroom that's seen better days. "I don't need to use the john," Dallas says with no small amount of attitude, "you wanna shoot me up in here, or what?"

Cowboy Hat gives him a long, hard look that makes Dallas feel like he's being undressed. He doesn't like it much. "Here's your drink," he says, kneels down beside the tub. "Grain alcohol, juniper berry juice, and glycerin."

"So this is your... business?" Dallas kneels down on the cracked tile too, tries not to look like a pussy and gag on the smell coming from the tub, the tall, individual bottles of glass-colored… should he even call it gin? Whatever he's manufacturing in there, even he's got enough sense not to want to guzzle. "This place like Appalachia or something? Your customers so broke, they'll risk going blind to spare a buck? Or you selling to the underage crowd?"

When Cowboy Hat smiles at him, he reveals that in addition to having two missing front teeth, he could also benefit from some dental work in the back. "Prohibition didn't end in this state 'til '59, kid. I used to make a pretty penny drivin' the real stuff up from Texas, too." Then he slaps him upside the head, hard enough his ears ring from the blow. "And take that shit back. I make quality product, ain't nobody gone blind yet."

Dallas almost slugs him right back, but then Cowboy Hat sits his ass down on the floor and pulls one of the bottles out, unscrews the cap. The smell can be best compared to mustard gas; Cowboy Hat tilts at it him, smirks. "What, you afraid? I'm not givin' you any of the good stuff for free, don't count on it."

Then he takes a draught from the bottle and nearly cringes out of his skin, like a caterpillar trying to crawl out of a chrysalis. Dallas snatches it from Cowboy Hat's hand. He gets home at five in the morning, his stomach churning worse than a washing machine on its fastest spin cycle, and with a new friend named Buck.

Oklahoma might not be the worst place in the world, after all. He comes back the next day.

* * *

When he meets Jackie, he comes barreling right into the middle of an argument. All he wanted was what he's been doing the past few days, getting the lay of the land from Buck— the drive-ins and dive bars with Mexican hitchhikers, hoods, greaser-types who watched _Rebel Without a Cause_ a few too many times— with more moonshine than's strictly good for his eyesight or stomach. Instead Buck's bawling out some broad who looks like a poor man's Brigitte Bardot, her blonde hair teased up in a wave above her head, while he tries to polish glasses. Dallas isn't close to drunk enough for this.

"I'm not havin' you turn tricks in here no more, Jack." Buck punctuates the sentence with another hard swipe of the dishrag, which just smears the glass more. "It ain't... sanitary."

"Unlike the rest of this place?" Jackie balances her hand on her hip precariously. She's wearing a longer skirt than any of the pros Dallas knew in Bed-Stuy, brushing the middle of her thighs, her blouse only skipping a couple of buttons, though she's got on heavier eye makeup and lipstick than most of the chicks here. Tulsa isn't exactly a fashion plate. "Don't worry—" she rolls her eyes, her lips set in a practiced, bored pout— "I always change the sheets between customers."

"Fine, then I don't need the trouble." Buck gives up on that glass and moves onto the next one. "This place just got turned upside down by the law for underage drinkin', you think I want a tip-off for indecent conduct with minors too?"

"I turned eighteen last week, not that I expected no birthday present out of you," she says, then swivels her hips around to look at Dallas. "What do you want?"

Dallas doesn't know why he does it, maybe just that old, familiar urge to stir up shit, and messing with this girl is as good a reason as any. "How much for an hour?"

"More than you can afford," she snaps right back, which surprises him, how bright-eyed and articulate she still is. "How old are you, anyway, huh? Twelve?"

Dallas doesn't let himself get insulted, just sits down beside her at the bar. "You're real pretty, to be a hooker, ain't you ever considered somethin' else?"

"Outta the mouths of babes, what'd I always tell you." Buck stabs an accusing finger right at the silver necklace dangling between her tits. "Don't think you're gonna keep those good looks, either, you get hooked on smack or crank."

She rolls her eyes again. "I make more on my back in an hour than some broads do from three days of typing, and you get your ass squeezed either way." Then she pulls out a cigarette and a matchbook— _Lawrence + Rita 1943, Austin_ , with wedding bells embossed in gold— and takes her time lighting up, ignoring Dallas's existence altogether. "Jesse Abrams wants to get an in here, push some of his product, Friday nights. You'd get a cut, obviously."

"Who's Jesse Abrams?" Dallas asks, sticking his nose, as usual, where it doesn't belong.

"The head of the River Kings— biggest outfit on this side of town, just about." Jackie flips all of her hair over one shoulder. "Buck, you even listenin' to me?"

Buck finishes with the last of the glasses, then throws down the rag. "Go put your apron on, how 'bout it?" he says. "Night crowd's about to start comin' in."

"You're a waitress?"

"She's a pain in my ass," Buck says. "That's what."

* * *

Dallas stares at the horse. The horse stares back, its eyes glimmering and liquid, then it brays like his presence personally offends it. "So this is your other business."

"Welcome to Oklahoma," Buck says, then spits a wad of chew out onto the floor of the stable. This place smells worse than any moonshine-filled bathroom ever could; Dallas has never been much of one for regular baths, but it's enough to leave even him wanting a shower. "We're rodeo people."

"You fix the races, or what?" Dallas gets the idea, there wasn't exactly much rodeo back in Brooklyn, but there were Dodgers games. A fool and his money are soon parted everywhere.

Buck looks a little too offended for a bootlegger who runs a roadhouse where people push meth. If he were a better actor, he would've put on a more subtle performance than the O of shock his mouth forms, like a Groucho Marx impression. "I ride the ponies honest, the hell are you accusin' me of? 'Cept some little tricks everyone does, shut up before you get the law on my ass." If Dallas were older, he might've taken a swing; instead, he kicks at the packed dirt beneath his feet with his gaucho boot. "Wanted to see if you was any good at it yourself."

"What exactly 'bout me made you think I'd be good at this?"

"You got the right build to be a jockey," Buck says, "you're skinny, kind of short for your age—"

" _Fuck_ you—"

"So get on Clover and let me see what you've got." Buck isn't exactly what you'd call sharp, but any successful bartender has to have some basic grasp of human psychology; he knows Dallas isn't the type to back down from a challenge, out of sheer stubborn pride if nothing else. He smirks, as he leads her out of the stall and she nuzzles Dallas's shoulder, hard enough to almost knock him off his feet. "Guess she likes you."

The arena is empty— it's a Sunday, though it's the middle of the season— except for Jackie sitting in the bleachers, a bright purple popsicle dangling from her mouth. She's got heart-shaped sunglasses on and a paperback in her lap; the author's name is Iris Murdoch, it's probably one of those chick books they sell at the drugstore on Sutton. She lets out a low whistle when she sees the two of them. "You were serious?" she says to Buck. "He ain't got the patience to break no horse, he's only half-broke himself."

Dallas scowls at her, tries to swing himself onto the saddle, and gets bucked off after ten seconds; fortunately, he takes the fall on his knees and doesn't end up busting his skull open. Jackie laughs. "Yeah, you think you could do better?"

"Know I can." She says it with less disdain and more pity, which just makes the whole thing worse. "My daddy's a cowboy, real rodeo star. I was ridin' before I could walk, just about."

Dallas clambers to his feet, gingerly favors one leg. "You got a dad? Didn't think you would." He regrets it once he says it. He knows better than anyone that having a dad doesn't mean shit.

"Yeah, he took off for Texas a few years back, wanted to tour the circuit. With my stepmama, not me." She says it without sentimentality or self-pity, like she's telling a story about somebody else. "Get back up, c'mon. Little kids 'round here can ride a horse, you definitely ain't beyond hope."

By the end of the day, Dallas is bruised and could wring bullets of sweat out of his shirt, but he can stay in the saddle. He's not really the smiling type, but he's close to it as he slides back onto the ground again. "Knew you had it in you," Buck says with satisfaction, like he had anything to do with the process besides shouting suggestions from the sidelines, a beer in hand. "Listen, Dally, how would you like me to hook you up with a little job at the Slash J, huh? It's real simple. You just press down or let up on the reins when I tell you before the race. Or feed the horse a lil' somethin'—"

Dallas narrows his eyes, and not just from the sun. "I don't do nothing anybody tells me."

* * *

It's late when Jackie pushes open the door of the room Dallas is sleeping it off in, which isn't what you'd call well-furnished. A loud clatter rolls in like a tsunami wave crashing on a shore, from downstairs; the sound of glasses clinking, loud, female giggles, cowboys and gangbangers cussing above the ruckus for the sheer sake of hearing themselves cuss, before she closes it just as fast.

When she approaches him on the bare mattress, no frame, he assumes it's a come-on and accepts the inevitable, thoughts slowed from what he's had to drink and the part of a joint he smoked and the new kind of thing he tried, a barbiturate pill that's made him forget everything that once bothered him. He lies back, placid, like he's already dead, but she just curls up beside him and doesn't reach for his zipper. "Are you a Jew?" she asks, her voice sleepy and soft like a kitten's mewl, no claws in it. "There's a lot of Jews in New York, yeah? And Communists. 'S what my daddy told me."

He doesn't know what to say. Yes and no both feel like lies, grasping at something that isn't his, denying something obvious like he's ashamed. He struggles and manages to roll over, the broken springs digging into his side. "I guess."

"I didn't mean nothin' bad by it, I was just wondering," she says; she reaches over to stroke his spine, her fingers so light they send a chill. "New York sounds real exciting, but I want to go to California, once I've saved up enough money. To Los Angeles."

"You wanna be an actress?" Dallas can barely keep the contempt out of the question. "Lot of guys tell you that you look just like Brigitte Bardot?"

"God, no," she says with a hard scoff. "A journalist. I want to be tellin' everyone Brigitte Bardot's business."

"Are you and Buck fucking?" he asks, soused enough to have lost whatever tact he once possessed, seems like they're playing Twenty Questions right now. He doesn't get that sense, exactly, he's never seen them kiss or him grab her ass or tits, but he doesn't understand what else he keeps her around for. He's not dumb, he knows the score about girls in circuits like Buck's— knows, as indulgent as Buck is with him now, not to trust him— and besides. The roadhouse doesn't need a waitress and she's a shitty one anyway.

"Was that a joke? You think I want to try to dodge those missing teeth with my tongue?" She cuts her eyes at him, and maybe for the first time he notices their bizarre shade, such a pale brown they look gold, the color of a wolf's eyes. "He's my half-brother, we had the same mama." Dallas does not ask what happened to her. He presumes nothing good. "He's not the real protective type, but he's not _that_ kind of brother, either. This ain't West Virginia."

Did she have that kind of stepfather? Father? He doesn't ask that either, because he doesn't have to. Girls like her don't come out of thin air. "I don't plan on serving his friends drinks my whole life," she says, all plucky determination. "I told you, I got big plans. Helluva lot bigger than Tulsa, that's for sure."

Dallas wants to say something pithy and mean about how the tougher the talk, the less you usually have to back it up with, but there's something feral in those eyes that makes him shut his mouth instead. She flops her head down onto the flat pillow and falls silent, maybe even falls asleep. He stares up at the ceiling and tries not to remember—

An aunt who didn't think the disguise of being a Baptist covered up enough. Got the devil in him, something lurking in the blood, something that can't be knocked out. Tendrils of memories slipping through his fingers like sand, sitting in the dark on Saturday, his mother's face half-limned in candlelight. _Things we can't tell Daddy. He wouldn't get it, yeah?_

He thought, at the time, Norm would be pissed that they bounced another electric bill.

Judaism sat like a ghost in that apartment, unseen and untouched and unspoken, but still felt. Something that died in their family a long time ago, only lived on through the way she traced the point of his chin— _your great-grandfather's_. Photo albums in sepia, _dead dead lives in Israel now I think dead dead maybe we'll go to Brighton Beach next weekend dead_. Light switches flipped off. And when she was gone too, that was it, really, for all of them.

He isn't anything, and he doesn't belong anywhere. He can never answer dopey questions like that.

* * *

The night Jesse Abrams dies isn't out of the ordinary. He isn't, either, for the closest Tulsa seems to have to a kingpin; hair an indistinguishable shade of light brown you see on everyone's head, tall, but probably not over six feet, wearing the typical leather jacket/jeans/worn-out combat boots combo that every greaser in the city considers a uniform. It's hard for Dallas to tell anything else, admittedly, because he's facedown in a pool of blood on the floor.

Buck turns the color of week-old oatmeal. Then he vomits, which isn't just what happens when you drink too much of what's being passed around at Jay's. Jackie rushes over to him from where she was crouched in a stairwell, tries to fling herself into his arms; they collide awkwardly, her bouncing off his chest like they aren't used to the motion. "Oh, God, I thought I was gonna die, I thought—" Her breathing catches, becomes something close to hyperventilation. "I didn't think any Tigers would be here tonight, much less Floyd—"

Sure she fucking didn't. Buck stumbles around like he's much, much drunker than he actually is, then bounds off into the bathroom off the bar, which can be politely described as a cross between a urinal and a sewage pit. This is where Dallas thrives, though, walking a razor's edge between adrenaline and panic. This is the most he's felt like himself in months. "You set this up?" he asks, turning to her as she hugs her own arms, stares out the dust-smeared window. It's a full moon tonight.

"I didn't think he'd _kill_ him," Jackie says, her eyes wet and gleaming with unshed tears as she looks back at him, the perfect moment of suspense before they can fall onto her cheekbones. "Just rough him up a little bit, teach him a lesson—"

"You're a shitty fucking liar." Dallas doesn't bother to take the edge off his words, like he's slicing into her with a serrated knife. "And you're gonna be a worse one when the fuzz start talkin' to you. You need to get out of here."

"I never meant—"

"Once more, with feeling." Dallas nudges the dead guy with the toe of his worn-out sneaker and tries not to think about the fact that he was a person before tonight. Before an hour ago. Before— "Was he your pimp?"

"He wasn't _my_ anything. More like a client." She smiles then, and for half a second, he imagines blood dripping from the tips of her canine teeth, down her chin. Then she starts rifling through the pockets of his leather jacket, clenches her fist around a wad of bills like she's pulling his heart out. Yanks the gold thumb ring off his hand, too, which just seems a little macabre, shoves it into her purse. "Thought he'd have more on him, sonuvabitch—"

"You need to get out of here. Floyd was smart enough to, and he obviously don't want you—"

"I wouldn't go anywhere with Floyd even if he tried to take me." She tilts her head at him. "You're just a kid, where do you get off lecturin' me, huh? You think you're tougher than any chick just on principle?"

"New York's a lot wilder than these hillbilly digs," he says. When he closes his eyes, he sees his mother again. She's always with him, even when she's not. "Los Angeles probably ain't much better."

There isn't a drop of blood on her clothes when she straightens up, not even a wrinkle in the pleat of her skirt. "I didn't like watching him die," she says. "It just had to happen. But I can see how people get to likin' it. I think I'm gonna be just fine."

She's gone before Buck gets out of the bathroom, finally, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand and stopping stock-still when he sees the body again. "I thought it was a dream," he says stupidly. "Thought I fell asleep on the can."

"Get your shit together." Dallas is a head shorter than him, but when he shakes Buck, his head snapping back and forth, he sees a hint of lucidity shaking into him again. "Dead bodies bring down property values, man, come _on_. What do you usually do with them?"

"D'you really fucking think—" and now, inexplicably, Buck has recovered enough from this ordeal to get some sarcasm back— "I've had enough in here that I've got a _set fucking procedure_ for what to do when one's bleeding out on my floor?"

"... You have drain cleaner, right? Under the sink?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

* * *

Buck's keeping his moonshine on the kitchen counters now. And on the kitchen table. It's barely sunrise and he's already so sloshed, he slumps over it, his hair such a rat's nest something might actually be nesting in there. "Jack left." He lifts the bottle to his mouth and chugs like it's spring water. "I don't think she's comin' back."

Maybe he did love her after all, or as much as any of them can love somebody. Sort of shallow and selfish and screwy, but it's a miracle they can scrape the feeling up at all, so you take what you can get and warm your heart with the embers. "She better not," Dallas says, which is his version of the same sentiment.

"You can stay here," Buck says, after a few moments of silence. Dallas chews on a piece of birthday cake that might've been freshly baked at the start of the decade, the frosting gummy and stale. "I mean... I know you and your daddy don't get along, and you ain't such a bad kid. Mouthy as shit, but you ain't so bad."

"I better be more than 'ain't so bad' after what I pulled off last night."

"How did the fuck did you know that trick with lye? That murder rap you got mixed up with in New York, someone put you in charge of gettin' rid of the body?"

What's left of Jesse Abrams is now rapidly disintegrating in a barrel. Dallas has been through a lot of shit in his life, but this really takes the fucking prize. Maybe the one good thing about this situation is that it feels way too absurd to be real, which is why he's sitting here with Buck and eating leftover cake instead of screaming until his ribcage cracks. He's fighting the urge to howl with laughter at the crumb stuck to Buck's mustache as is.

"Nah, I just tell that story to look tuff." Dallas takes a sip of Buck's booze and swishes it around like mouthwash. "The leader of my old crew got shot and we all ran away screaming, pretty much, 's not even why I left New York. Norm's gambling debts were catching up to him and he remembered cost of living was cheaper in Oklahoma. Remembered to haul me into the truck at the last minute, too."

"Then how did you—"

"Heard about it from some guy in reform school, last time I was there. Man, I can't believe it actually worked, I thought he was spinnin' bullshit. Guess some people are livin' even wilder lives than mine."

Dallas feels a thousand years old, but then again, he always does. He also feels alone, but he realizes that Buck feels alone too, which is more comforting than being alone by himself. "I'll ride those ponies, if you're still offerin'," he says, babbling a little. He didn't sleep last night, and the moonshine is making his eyelids as heavy as concrete— he lays his arm out on the table and rests his head on it. "Honest, though, I'm gonna do it honest. Might as well start somewhere."

**Author's Note:**

> I think I made it pretty obvious, but Jackie is the golden-eyed cowboy's daughter— she was born in 1943, and she's his first kid. (Mark will come out around 1950, Tex around 1962, if my ten second math is correct. He didn't really learn much about condom use throughout the decades, unfortunately.)


End file.
